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James O’Keefe Discredited—Again

Tue, 03/15/2011 - 10:21am — Brian

When will leaders in politics and the media stop believing right-wing smear artist James O’Keefe? Known for his “sting videos,” O’Keefe has been consistently discredited for his work against ACORN, CNN, a U.S. Senator, and now, NPR.

This wasn’t the first time O’Keefe doctored videos, as he performed the same malicious editing in his “sting” of the civic group ACORN. A probe into the videos by California’s Attorney General found no criminal activity by ACORN employees and said O’Keefe’s videos reflect “highly selective editing of reality.” Later, O’Keefe was arrested and convicted for attempting to tamper with the phones of US Senator Mary Landrieu’s office and also was caught trying to humiliate a CNN reporter when one of his own coworkers called him out.

Currently, Republicans in Congress are trying to defund NPR and PBS, and leading Republicans quickly embraced O’Keefe’s undercover videos, which were deceptively edited to show NPR officials speaking critically of the Tea Party and conservatives.

US Senator Dick Durbin told the GOP to drop its plan to defund public broadcasting and stop using O’Keefe’s discredited videos as an excuse:

If the name James O' Keefe rings a bell with members of the United States Senate it should. Remember some of the other things he was caught doing?... Mr. O'Keefe is obviously not worried about breaking a law if he thinks he is going to come up with a sensational video. He was convicted in Louisiana as I mentioned earlier.

Not only should Republicans stop paying O’Keefe attention, but so should media personalities like Chris Wallace of Fox News who lauded the smear artist as “power player of the week.” But while O’Keefe may be able to win attention for himself, he continues to lose all credibility.